


love comes in threes

by wolframvonbielefeld (maknaeline)



Series: cloud's giftfics [8]
Category: The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Character Study, Fluff, M/M, Mild Angst, Novel Spoilers, Other ships are mentioned, third wheeling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 20:58:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16291676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maknaeline/pseuds/wolframvonbielefeld
Summary: It takes two people to fall in love and another person to narrate it.or: Wangji and Wuxian thirdwheel everyone even before they get together.





	love comes in threes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aithusas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aithusas/gifts).



> I wrote like two fics for this prompt I love u @matsokas thank you for being patient enough to hold me through this.

Jiang Cheng is single and  _ fine. _

 

He’s living his life in relative peace, the sect is running well, and there’s a bounty on the head of any necromancers in the area that usually stops them from going and making an ass of themselves in public when he pulls out Zidian and makes them squeal like the pigs they are. Jin Ling has actually started following instructions, for once, and he can indulge his whims once in a while on that basis alone because Buddha knows he has no clue how to raise a child. That’s probably one of the reasons he keeps getting all those refusals, but it’s honestly not like he has any clue how to function with a wife instead. His role models were not exactly the greatest.

 

Children, though. As sect leader Zewu-jun has pointed out earlier, at the last Discussion Conference he had been to, most children raise themselves. Jiang Cheng supposes he’s right, considering that a stone-cold brick like Lan Wangji has somehow managed to raise the most well-behaved child on the continent when he’s done, Jiang Cheng is sure, absolutely _ nothing  _ to deserve it. Hell,  _ he  _ doesn’t have a wife either, for all he looks like he’s lost one a decade ago and never quite stopped being miserable about it. The war took a toll on all of them in different ways.

 

Not that Zewu-jun - Lan Xichen - has stopped looking any less gorgeous for it, but that’s a different story of an unrequited crush he’s not going into,  _ ever _ .

 

But - the point is, he’s functioning, he’s been angry for thirteen years now and he’s started cooling off as soon as Jin Ling hit his teens and took on some of that anger for him. He has a pack of dogs who come night hunting with him and who make him bitter every time he remembers a brother’s screams in the distance, calling out from a tree -  _ Jiang Cheng! Jiang Cheng, save me! _

 

Fat lot of good that did. Jiang Cheng should’ve left him to the dogs.

 

(He feels guilty as soon as he says this, and burns another incense stick for his sister, feeling vaguely like she’s reaching out from the spirit world to box his ears.)

 

Of course, it is exactly when he has started mellowing out with the years that Wei Wuxian decides to appear in his vicinity, back from the dead, and this is when he finds him backed up against Lan Wangji, back to his chest, barely struggling at the hold on his arm as his fluting drives Wen Ning, that  _ bastard _ , away into the forest with the rogue cultivators giving chase.

 

So yes, Jiang Cheng is fine, until he’s not, and he watches, incredulous, as Lan Wangji  _ drops his hand  _ to stare at Wei Wuxian, in his new, smaller frame, pant out loud after a truly terrible flute solo, and do absolutely nothing to subdue him. It doesn’t matter that there’s a disintegrated goddess statue nearby, or several rogue cultivators staring at them curiously, or  _ actual children _ in the vicinity. Jiang Cheng’s rising horror goes up a notch when he realizes, from this angle, that Lan Wangji’s hand isn’t even on his sword. He’s just. Staring.

 

Like his beloved wife is back from the dead.

 

_ What the fuck. _

 

He interrupts what was probably going to be an intensely loving reunion with a crack of Zidian, flaring purple through the forest until it’s met with Lan Wangji’s guqin. This, above all, convinces him that it’s definitely Wei Wuxian. There are very few people on the planet that would look at the current body of the Yiling Patriarch like it was his next meal and defend him the next moment.

 

What follows is one of the most bewildering conversations he’s been subjected to in the last thirteen years.

 

“Sect-leader?” one of his subordinates says nervously, as he twists Zidian around his finger, watching Lan Wangji lead Mo Xuanyu - Wei Wuxian - he’s sure, he’s sure - away, like a tiny wedding procession. All they need is a palanquin and a bridal veil. “Is - are they -”

 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jiang Cheng snaps. He feels fifteen and petulant all of a sudden, this new development reminding him far too closely of back then.

 

Jiang Cheng is single, and for once in his life, he is  _ not  _ happy about it.

 

***

 

Lan Sizhui is  _ perplexed _ .

 

He’s fairly sure no one has ever been allowed inside the jingshi before, let alone Senior Mo - he likes to think that he’s special, but even he’s avoided it out of respect for many years now. Outside of the few times he’d slept inside because of internal conflicts within the clan - there’s been a fair few over the years - he has never even thought of stepping foot inside without Hanguang-jun’s express permission.

 

_ Father, _ he thinks, sometimes, and feels a mild guilt at something he does not understand. Perhaps it is the informality of the word. Perhaps it is because he is barely a son in name, and because people, regardless of clan rules, like to look at him and whisper gossip about a forbidden affair and his long-dead  _ other  _ parent. Sizhui yearns to know - he always has, his name an ironic echo in more ways than one (he knows that his Father’s eyes will never be not cold. Lans feel too much or not at all.) - and fails to find out.

 

It is not always bad. Hanguang-jun has taught him all that he knows, guiding him towards the right path when no one else could. Even with his cold catlike yellow eyes always trained on someone beyond reach, even with the weekly ritual that was him strumming the _ qin  _ waiting for an answer he will never get, he has never neglected him in all the ways that matter.

 

But today Sizhui pauses at the bridge, staring at the people before him. It is something he has seen before, in an illustrated book about the creation of the clan. 

 

Hanguang-jun -  _ Father _ \- stands under the peach blossom tree, one of his numerous tiny rabbits tucked under his elbow, and watches the strange Senior Mo laughing heartily at the donkey that tucks its tail between its legs and moves back towards the shed.

 

It’s not that strange of a sight, really. Father will stop at strange things, sometimes, with a barely-discernible tilt of his lips upwards, looking like he’s deep in thought. He has seen him do this with loquats brought in fresh from the market sometimes, at the magnolia trees outside in full bloom, at a large dried peony bookmark he keeps preserved like it’s his rarest treasure. Sometimes it’s after they run into a good-natured drunk in the city during exorcisms, even though he always refuses the offered alcohol. Just because they are outside Gusu, Sizhui has learnt, does not mean that they are not bound to honor those rules.

 

(He had explained this to Jingyi once, and Father had looked wistful at that too. Perhaps a little amused. A little proud. It could be his imagination.)

 

This, though. Senior Mo stops laughing and turns to him, and his laughter fades away into a smile that makes him gasp. Not because it is beautiful - Senior Mo _ is  _ beautiful when he cleans up, in an obnoxious way that would have fit well with the glamour of Golden Carp Tower ( _ like Jin Ling, _ his traitorous mind whispers), but because of how Father stands still, studying him like he is committing this pose, his face to memory.

 

He has not seen - no, he has  _ never  _ seen him look like that. Perhaps, once or twice, when he had been playing by the spring for the spirits to answer, he had come across that expression on his face. But never like this. Never like he is using his own spiritual energy to remember someone’s existence is real.

 

Never at a real person of flesh and blood, lunatic or sane. 

 

Neither of them seem to realize they’re not alone.

 

“Is he  _ smiling? _ ” Jingyi says, amazed. “Wait, do they even realize we’re standing right here?”

 

“No,” Sizhui says. The smile that rises to his face is beyond his control. Perhaps it is time, he thinks, that Father found happiness.

 

***

 

Lan Jingyi is a good disciple. He  _ is _ . He doesn’t deserve to have chicken stuffed into his mouth when he’s going to point out exactly how outrageous the scene before him is.

 

“Sizhui!” he hisses, as soon as they’re gone to bed “Sizhui!!!” 

 

“What?” The other boy rolls over, looking disgruntled, but otherwise completely unsurprised at the developments of the night. Ouyang, on the other end, is dead to the world and snoring, so Jingyi gives him up as a lost cause. Jin Ling is stirring next to him, but that doesn’t matter, because this is  _ important. _

 

“The ribbon!! He didn’t even know!” Jingyi reconsiders the entire trip. “You know, what in the seven hells, I knew they were some kind of star-crossed lovers. It’s how all the books depict them. And that play we went to once.”

 

Jin Ling smacks his head from the next bedroll. “Since when do you watch plays about cut-sleeves? Does the Lan sect even allow that?”

 

Sizhui’s voice grows oddly soft. “We are not forbidden to speak of it, even if it’s unusual. They’re just people like us. Like me.”

 

To Jingyi’s surprise, before he can back Sizhui up, Jin Ling falls silent, as if considering something. There’s a flicker of light, before Jingyi realizes he’s lit a talisman.

 

“I’m...sorry,” Jin Ling says. “For earlier.” He says this directly to Sizhui’s face, and they share a quiet moment, which Jingyi decides to leave well alone, given the awkward argument they had earlier.

 

In the darkness, if not for his severe lack of chest anatomy, Jingyi could’ve sworn he looked like a princess talking to her secret paramour. Sizhui definitely doesn’t lose out on the handsomeness category either. It makes his chest feel oddly tight, like he’s watching one of those plays again, the ones that consistently make him feel like a single dog -

 

Wait, why the hell does he feel like he’s been in this situation before? 

 

“Hey, hey, Sizhui, you’re not allowed to court girls before I do, all right? I’m going to have an even better romance than any of you, anyway -”

 

Sizhui breaks eye contact with Jin Ling, and looks at him in exasperation. “That’s literally never going to happen, Jingyi.”

 

“What in the hells, do you doubt my powers of attraction?” Jingyi considers that. “All right, maybe you have a point. I mean, it’s not like I can seduce any of you.”

 

Jin Ling really does smack him in the head this time, face red.  _ “Go to sleep, you buffoon!” _

 

***

 

Meng Yao does not anticipate that Wei Wuxian has no idea, but the timing of his confession alone is baffling. He sees them embrace, right at the point of death itself, and wonders if he truly has lived a half-life before, considering that the rest of the world falls away for these two when they are together. He had said that he held Lan Wangji’s life in his hands, but he had never expected -

 

Lan Xichen, at the least, seems to not mind, his smile almost fond, if strained at the situations. He wonders how long he had known, had supported them.

 

_ You could have had it all, _ his mind tells him.  _ He was in the palm of your hand, and you chose your name instead. _

 

Meng Yao has always truly loved only one person. He supposes it is fitting that it is the same person that ends him. Perhaps it is how it was meant to be, for people who chose anything else over love.

 

***

  
  


[CODA]

 

Jiang Cheng draws the line when the two start to flirt at a wedding.

 

“You look beautiful in red, Wei Ying.”

 

“Ah, but you would have looked prettier in red, Lan Zhan!”

 

Specifically, _ his own wedding. _

 

“Can you fucking wait until we’re done with the ceremony?” he yells at them right across the altar. Xichen, that traitorous husband to be of his, just laughs in his face.

 

“Let them be,” he says. “It takes two people to fall in love, and three people to understand it, isn’t it?”

 

Jiang Cheng looks over at Wei Wuxian, who winks and holds his thumb up at him, before he starts to whisper to Lan Wangji about how happy he looks. His brow twitches.

 

“Don’t give them ideas, or he’ll start popping out a baby at the next wedding we go to,” he grumbles. Xichen takes his hand, and they kneel before heaven and earth.

 

“That’s actually a good idea,” he hears Wei Wuxian say. “Lan Zhan, I should start experimenting with new talismans for that.”

 

“En.”

 

Jiang Cheng has had enough.

 

_ “I’m going to throw the both of you out!”  _ he bellows, and Xichen calmly hands him his wine to shut him up.

**Author's Note:**

> the thing that xichen says is actually an old saying I've heard my Extremely asian parents say so often it's ingrained into me now lmao.
> 
> sorry if it's rushed but [takes deep breath] FINALLY DONE!!! please leave feedback it is lovely.


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